Abstract
The dynamic climatic conditions, and anthropogenic activities have a significant impact on the Ganga basin, which is crucial for sustaining the eco-hydrological processes within the agricultural landscape of northern India. Additionally, the Ganga basin represents one of the largest and most densely inhabited aquifer systems globally. Inadequate management practices of groundwater in the current context are likely to contribute to a shortage of food insecurity in the near future. The multi-point statistics using non-parametric test based on the well data point for the period of 1996–2016, were analysed and geoprocessed for the seasonal (pre-monsoon, monsoon, post-monsoon) trend of groundwater depth, fluctuation, and drought in the Ganga basin. The zonal statistical mean of groundwater depletion/loss were maximum observed in post-monsoon season (10 ± 21 cm/year), followed by pre-monsoon(9 ± 22 cm/year), and monsoon (9 ± 21 cm/year). The groundwater depth fluctuation trend magnitude in the Ganga basin ranges from −0.57 m/year to 0.85 m/year, having mean of −0.01 ± 0.07 m/year. The areal percentage of the Ganga basin showing the groundwater drought propagation regions for the pre-monsoon, monsoon, and post-monsoon are found as 74.86%, 74.17%, and 78.52%, respectively. The severity of groundwater drought increased 22 times during pre-monsoon, 9 times in monsoon, and 7 times in the post-monsoon season from 1996 to 2016. The negative groundwater depth fluctuation leads to the groundwater mining at an alarming rate, and formation of dark zone. The decadal trend migration of the mean center shows high spatial variability based on the overexploitation of groundwater. The spatial mapping of declining depth, and increasing drought magnitude of groundwater leads to the groundwater scarcity in most of the regions, which could affect to achieve UN-SDG, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) (2015–2030).
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